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It’s clear that consumers are fascinated by wearable technology. Whether it's smart fitness bands like the Nike+ Fuelband that track activity, calories burned and sleep quality; smartwatches like the Pebble that bring smartphone capabilities to your wrist; or smart pet trackers like the Whistle that monitor your pets’ behavior, the number and breadth of wearable devices we own continues to increase.

But what about businesses? Wearables are expected to hit the enterprise ever harder, enabling hands-free tracking of goods, making sales teams more productive and providing healthcare workers with easy access to the most up-to-date patient data, among many other applications.

Indeed, wearables are primed to change the way businesses function and to provide technology to employees who—for practical, logistical or safety reasons—have not previously had access to it in certain areas of the workplace. “We think the enterprise will take the driver’s seat in making the category explode—almost the reverse of the smartphone and tablet market,” said Bill Briggs, chief technology officer of Deloitte Consulting LLP and Global Lead of Deloitte Digital.

However, as businesses increasingly turn to wearables to increase productivity and gain competitive advantage, they need to follow some important guidelines to ensure they are using the technology effectively.

1. Design explicitly for wearable devices

When mobile technology came onto the scene, it took a while for companies to understand what it meant to design for mobile rather than traditional mouse-and-keyboard desktop experiences. Mobile apps required new design paradigms, including simpler experiences and more context-aware use cases. Companies that simply ported existing desktop applications to smaller mobile screens often failed.

"Part of the mobile movement was learning to design for swipe, tap and contextual environments that know where you are and what you're doing. Most companies are still on that journey," Briggs said.

Wearables, he added, involve a new set of best practices, challenges and constraints.

“It's a pretty significant shift that involves learning how to use sensors, processing power that might be on another device, and devices that might not even have displays on them,” Briggs said. "We can learn from the transition from desktop to web, and web to mobile, to accelerate the process, but ultimately companies need to learn a completely new paradigm.”

2. Don't wait for standardization: Pick a horse

Sometimes it makes sense to wait for a standard to develop around a particular technology, but, when it comes to wearables, now is not that time. Briggs urges companies not to wait for the market to settle, especially if they want to gain a competitive advantage.

“There will be confusion about how to sift through the explosion of new devices from different manufacturers, and how to standardize and deliver experiences on top,” he said. “But the best way is to pick a horse and start exploring.”

Briggs noted that as the wearables market matures in the enterprise space, it will enable more compelling products driven by open APIs.

“Wearables are an interesting intersection with mobile, the Internet of Things and asset intelligence," he said. "As these product categories evolve, the developer community will accelerate."

3. Be open about privacy and security

Privacy and security, understandably, are the most common concerns that businesses have about wearable technology, according to Briggs.

In order to drive adoption, it’s important for organizations to get their employees excited by demonstrating how wearable technology will benefit them and explaining what's being done to protect their information. It’s also important to test out whether the company has enough bandwidth and the right network infrastructure in place to support the wearable technology trend.

“You need to position employees as the hero whose problems you’re solving to make their lives better; otherwise, you will get into a big brother scenario," Briggs said, noting that employees' historic receptiveness to smartphones bodes well for the adoption of wearable devices.

Wearables also present security concerns since they can introduce new vulnerabilities for hackers to exploit.

“Security needs to be part of this from the very beginning—you have to have a conversation about acceptable risk,” Briggs said. He noted that the level of risk—and of remediation—depends on the application. For example, there will be different levels of security and compliance based on whether an application tracks a retail assistant's behaviors and patterns on a show floor or is used for financial transactions.

The bottom line

Although wearables can offer enterprises a competitive advantage, companies should give careful consideration to the business problem they’re solving, the users and environment involved, and privacy and security concerns.

“You have to say why can’t a laptop or tablet do the job better," Briggs said. "Worker benefit has to be the critical filter, or you’ll get a lot of bad ideas."